


The Red Rose of Lancaster

by The_Lake_King



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Erotica, Homosexuality, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Internalized Homophobia, Love Confessions, M/M, Marriage, POV Third Person Omniscient, Parallels, Past Abuse, Reunions, too many roses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 10:29:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29915541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Lake_King/pseuds/The_Lake_King
Summary: A bartender’s salary is enough for a single red rose, bought on impulse from a girl with no stockings.Or, Thomas misses Edith's wedding in favour of an old friend.
Relationships: Edith Crawley/Bertie Pelham, Thomas Barrow/Jimmy Kent
Comments: 18
Kudos: 31





	The Red Rose of Lancaster

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dragons_in_the_north](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragons_in_the_north/gifts), [bumblegwen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bumblegwen/gifts), [irrationalgame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/irrationalgame/gifts).



> As per your request. I have no idea what this is and I wrote it in about two hours, but hopefully it pleases.

White roses are for York. They trail from the bannister, the pews, from the bouquet in her hands. Theirs is a peace like the heavy peace of snow, that covers all past transgressions and levels all ugliness to blank. The ones she holds have no thorns. They have long been bred out of such nonsense, bred to serve the men who grow them in long greenhouses that smell of worms and childhood. No one speaks her sins. No one throws red paint upon her virgin’s gown. He waits for her. The one who feared, the one who ran. He will run no longer. Her burdens are their burdens, her child their child. She is his lady and he her lord, and they will stand before God and Man in a church of white roses beneath the snow.

One man is absent. Another was never invited.

A bartender’s salary is enough for a single red rose, bought on impulse from a girl with no stockings. Its thorns prick his hands. His warm breath tries to keep it from wilting in the bitter cold. He is calling in a favour from years ago. A favour to right a wrong that cannot be spoken with ink and paper, nor yet with the words from his unlearned lips. His is not a poet’s tongue, his teeth no troubadour’s teeth. His eyes are old for the face they live in, his hands rough from the clink-slide-polish, wipe down the counter and put up the stools. But he holds a red rose for Lancaster, and lets it speak for him.

An absent man answers, caution in his grey eyes. He is less absent, now, though still not here.

The room is red, heavy with the things they are not allowed to touch.

“What do you want, after all this time?” the absent man asks.

He wants to tell him he is sorry. To pour out all the things that twisted up his fingers and cracked each rib in perfect symmetry. _She_ told him so many things. He has had to unpick them one by one, like the tiny stitches of a glove. _You like it. You would have been wasted, if it wasn’t for me, who came and set you on the proper path. Imagine such a handsome face, rotting behind prison bars. Is this not so much better? Is it not cleaner, to cover things beneath the snow? You like it. You know you do._ Eloquence abandons him, but his heart sits beating on the floor. Thomas picks it up with tears in his eyes.

Forgiveness tastes of cigarettes.

In a church of white roses the organ plays an old song, and in a red room hands learn new gestures. Pale hands were meant to heal, to put back gears and bend back springs, to stitch up torn cloth and leather and flesh. Their violence extends only to themselves. And they have been violent. Jimmy presses the pink lines to the curve of his cheek. He does not need to ask why. The details do not matter. Only one word knows how to speak itself in the silence of a razor. It is the same word that nudges him to drink his wages each night, to rail and scream at God and the Moon and all the Kings in their castles:

Alone.

It is a final sort of word. He will erase it, make sure those scars on his beloved’s arms fade, even if the task should take a lifetime. He will kiss the thorns beneath his skin, love every disparate part with all that he is able until Alone is a foreign sound.

The red rose lies on a chair. Red lips discover the taste of collarbones, of shoulders and necks, of flesh once soft now sunken, and flesh once firm now growing soft. Blond waves fall across a pillow too good for their heads. A blanket too good for their skin slides down their legs. Secrets are learned in the non-space between their bodies, in the darkened crush of atoms.

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God and in the face of this congregation to join together this man and this woman…”

The flowers trail from her hand. White roses are for purity. Her beauty surpasses them all. He cannot look at her; she is too bright. If he examines her too closely she might dissolve into stardust, and leave him alone in the snow. She will be his lady, and he will be her lord, his home will be their home, his future their future.

“I, Herbert Allen Francis Pelham, take thee, Edith Josephine Crawley, to be my wedded wife…”

Flesh knows flesh in the stillness. They are muffled by the drapes within and the snow without, their oneness known to them and only them. The man who should be in a pew rocks in the waves of their most sacred sin, gripping his lover’s golden hair so he cannot melt away into fever dreams and late-night fantasies. Jimmy’s face shines where it rests on the pillow, sunlight condensed into skin, and Thomas opens like a blossom to the morning.

Words are thought of, though they do not speak them. Not today, not yet. Never in the sight of God and Man: 

_I, James Henry Kent, take thee, Thomas John Barrow…_

This is the only joining they will know; the sweat-slicked push and pull. Red roses are for desire. Red lips are for lust. Red blood to pump in thrumming arteries, to crave insatiable heat. They seek to erase distance, in all the ways they can, _till death do us part._ Alone is not an option, after having known the ecstasy of Together. They promise each other, with every touch, every habit-muffled cry that this is not the end. This is the beginning.

_With this ring I thee wed,_

Come what may, no man, no law can erase their memories, the invisible paths of their fingers.

 _With my body I thee worship,_ _an_ _d with all my worldly goods I thee endow:_

He is here with him. The one who feared, the one who ran. He will run no longer.

_In the name of the Father,_

The pale column of Thomas’ throat lingers in an image burned behind Jimmy’s eyelids, his head thrown back, dark hair loose across his brow. Now he knows the infinity of colour found between black hair and white skin. Now he knows how it was always supposed to feel to come undone in the arms of a lover.

_And of the Son,_

Thomas has never been clean until this moment. He has never been dragged down into this ocean between two sheets, this baptism for a small space. Now he knows what it is to make a home in the pit of another man’s chest. Now he knows what it is to let his armour sink, and swim free of its weight.

_And of the Holy Ghost._

There are no atoms between them. There is no up or down, no before and no after.

_Amen._

The rice is swept up, the sheets put back in order. White roses are taken down.

The red rose is for Thomas. It was bought on impulse from a girl with no stockings. It lives in a wooden box, carefully preserved, as over the years and decades it crumbles into dust.

**Author's Note:**

> That word count though.


End file.
